Last year, I praised the iPhone in something of the way Romeo oncepraised Juliet: The device, I said, is revolutionary – "it marks a newway of life. One day we'll all have iPhones, or things that aim to dowhat this first one does, and your life will be better for it." Butbecause I'd concluded that the phone was, at the time, too expensive tokeep (this was before Apple cut the price), several readers allegedthat I was an Apple hater. For instance: "Does Salon actually pay youor are you being paid under the table by rival companies?"

David Pogue of the New York Times experienced the same effect after mentioning that the iPod Nano cost more per gigabyte than the iPod Mini, as Boing Boing's Joel Johnson observed.

I know the feeling. In a 2003 piece called Five Reasons Not to Buy an iPod, I argued that while the iPod was the best overall MP3 player in the world, it lacked in a few areas that could be deal breakers for some people.

Readers responded with at least one death threat and a quirkierrecommendation: that Apple fans find me, pin me down, and tattoo anApple logo on my forehead.

I didn't take the threats seriously, of course, and I agree with Johnson that the effect has become less pronounced over the past couple of years. Besides, when I praise an Apple product the opposite happens. It all comes out in the wash.

For the record, out of my five reasons not to buy an iPodin 2003 – short battery life, no flash-memory version, a high price, no audiorecording, and no choice in online stores – Apple has since solved thefirst three, and the fifth is on its way to working itself out aslabels experiment with DRM-free music stores.